Tuesday, February 3, 2009

"mom...i farted!"

You probably won't hear a mother say this very often, but those words "Mom...I farted!" coming from my feisty 3-year-old daughter were music to my ears yesterday.

Why? you may be wondering.

Well, because she said "Mom...I farted!" not "Mom...I sharted!" You see, Malia has never really been able to pronounce her F's or V's, but has rather replaced those letters with S's. Here are some examples of her form of some words that involve these particular letters:

We have made several attempts over the past while to correct her speach, but to no avail. She just couldn't form those sounds with her mouth.

However -- this weekend was a break-through for her, and suddenly it just happened. After she already had a few victories in this regard with Les' help, I managed to teach her how to say "friend" properly. I was upstairs with her at the time, and I told her she should go downstairs to show Daddy that she learned how to say that word properly.

She very proudly went down the stairs, all the while reciting the newly pronounced word with every step she took...

"Ffff-friend...ffff-friend...ffff-friend...ffff-friend."

We celebrated with her many times this weekend on her new progress in the English language. If she would use such an F-word in a sentence, like "Mommy is my friend" it would still come out as "schriend" by the time she got to that word. But when the word was said on its own, she was definitely saying it correctly.

So imagine my delight when yesterday she said her F-word correctly all the way at the end of her sentence.

LOL Michael used to do a lot of letter replacement too...it was a bittersweet moment when he started saying things correctly, growing up & all. That picture is SO cute! I'd frame that and hang it on a wall.

That's great. I mean farting is perfectly normal (hee hee), but it's great that she is learning how to say more things. I remember when Joel had such a hard time with words. It was so discouraging for him; and people thought because he was big, he must be slow. So I feel for little ones that have a hard time saying things and it's just AWESOME how she's growing up.